GCSE English: Y10 Paper 2 HW 1 – 60 minute Homework

Read the text below and then answer each question fully.
Answer the questions with no more than one sentence. Put the ideas into your own words.
Spend 5 minutes on this.
1a) Give one reason the writer chose to live in Cambridge.
1b) Give one example of what the word ‘wild’ made the writer think of when he was a child.
1c) What can be heard in the beechwood?

Answer in full sentences and paragraphs. Spend 15 minutes on this answer. You must give at
least four or more impressions.
2) What impression does the author give of non-wild places such as the local beachwood
and city of Cambridge?
In your answer, you must:
Give at least four different impressions.
Choose the exact quotation to support your idea.
Pick out specific words or details and explain why they give certain impressions.

Anyone who lives in a city will know the feeling of having been there too long. The gorge-vision that streets imprint on us, the
sense of blockage, the longing for the surfaces other than glass, brick, concrete and tarmac. I live in Cambridge, a city set in
one of the most intensively farmed and densely populated regions od the world. It is an odd place for someone who loves
mountains and wilderness to have settled. Cambridge is probably, hour for hour, about as far from what might conventionally
be called ‘wild land’ as anywhere in Europe. I feel that distance keenly. But good things hold me there: my family, my work,
my affection for the city itself, the way the stone of its old buildings condenses the light. I have lived in Cambridge on and off
for a decade and I imagine I will continue to do so for years to come. And for as long as I stay here, I know I will also have to
get to the wild places.

I could not now say when I first grew to love the wild, only that I did, and that a need for it will always remain strong in me.
As a child, whenever I read the word, it conjured images of wide spaces, remote and figureless. Isolated islands off the
Atlantic coasts. Unbounded forests, and blue snow-light falling on to drifts marked with the paw-prints of wolves. Frost
shattered summits and corries holding lochs of great depth. And this was the vision of a wild place that had stayed with me:
somewhere boreal, wintery, vast, isolated, demanding of the traveller in its asperities. To reach a wild place was, for me, to
step outside human history.

The beachwood could not answer my need for wildness. The roar of near-by roads was audible, as were the crash and honk
of the trains that passed to the west. The surrounding fields were treated with fertilizer and herbicide to maximise
productivity. And the hedgerows were favourite locations for fly-tippers. Junk heaps would appear overnight: brick rubble,
water swollen plywood, rags of newspapers.

corries: a steep circular hollow on the side of a mountain, often containing a loch or lake.

boreal: referring to the far north, especially the Artic region.

asperities: rough manner or temper.

Read the text below and then answer the questions that follow.

The mountains after St. Sulpice became loftier and more beautiful. We passed through a narrow
valley between two ranges of mountains, clothed with forests, at the bottom of which flowed a
river, from whose narrow bed on either side the boundaries of the vale arose precipitously. The
road lay about half way up the mountain, which formed one of the sides, and we saw the
overhanging rocks above us and below, enormous pines, and the river, not to be perceived but
from its reflection of the light of heaven, far beneath. The mountains of this beautiful ravine are so
little asunder, that in time of war with France an iron chain is thrown across it. Two leagues from
Neufchâtel we saw the Alps: range after range of black mountains are seen extending one before
the other, and far behind all, towering above every feature of the scene, the snowy Alps. They
were an hundred miles distant, but reach so high in the heavens, that they look like those
accumulated clouds of dazzling white that arrange themselves on the horizon during summer. Their
immensity staggers the imagination, and so far surpasses all conception, that it requires an effort of
the understanding to believe that they indeed form a part of the earth.

From this point we descended to Neufchâtel, which is situated in a narrow plain, between the
mountains and its immense lake, and presents no additional aspect of peculiar interest.

The three answers below have all been answered incorrectly. Read each one.
Explain why the answer is wrong. Write the correct answer. Spend no more than 10
minutes on this.

3a) How did the mountains change after St Sulpice

They were lofty and step.

Wrong because:

Correct answer:

3b) What is at the bottom of the narrow valley?

Forests

Wrong because:

Correct answer:

3c) What is described as ‘towering above every feature of the scene;?

The range of black mountains.

Wrong because:

Correct answer:

4) Spend 30 minutes on this task Transactional Writing task: Write an article for a local magazine
exploring the idea of adventures and challenges and why they are important.
You should: use a title, write in detailed paragraphs, explore at least three different ideas, control
full stops and commas, use at least five impressive words.